A Brief History of Four-Year Gubernatorial Terms
How many states have always held elections for governor every four years?
Per a recent reader request, this Smart Politics report reviews the timeline across which states adopted four-year terms for gubernatorial elections.
Over the decades, the vast majority of states have constitutionally changed the term of office for governors with all but two (New Hampshire, Vermont) eventually settling on four-year terms.
[Vermont and New Hampshire also modified term lengths for governors in their states, switching from elections every one year to two years in 1870 and 1878 respectively].
With qualified exceptions, 13 states have always elected governors to four year terms once direct elections were instituted: Alaska, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Montana, Nevada, Oklahoma, Oregon, Utah, Virginia, Washington, and Wyoming.
[Note: In some of the aforementioned states the duration between the first election after statehood and the second election was not four years to accommodate getting on a prescribed presidential or midterm election cycle (e.g. Florida, Hawaii, Montana, Nevada, Oklahoma, Utah, Washington). In other states, terms were occasionally shortened to accommodate moving the election to a different cycle (e.g. Kentucky in 1848 and Illinois in 1846 and again in 1976).].
The remaining 35 states eventually landed on four-year terms in the following election years:
- 1830s: Delaware (1832)
- 1850s: Indiana (1852), Maryland (1853), Louisiana (1855)
- 1860s: California (1863), North Carolina (1868), Mississippi (1869)
- 1870s: West Virginia (1872), Missouri (1876), Pennsylvania (1878)
- 1900s: Alabama (1902)
- 1920s: South Carolina (1926)
- 1930s: New York (1938)
- 1940s: Georgia (1942), Idaho (1946), New Jersey (1949)
- 1950s: Connecticut (1950), Tennessee (1954), Colorado (1958), Ohio (1958)
- 1960s: Maine (1962), Minnesota (1962), North Dakota (1964), Massachusetts (1966), Michigan (1966), Nebraska (1966)
- 1970s: Arizona (1970), New Mexico (1970), Wisconsin (1970), Iowa (1974), Kansas (1974), South Dakota (1974), Texas (1974)
- 1980s: Arkansas (1986)
- 1990s: Rhode Island (1994)
[Note: Gaps between elections occasionally varied in some Southern states during and shortly after the Civil War and Reconstruction or when states moved their contest to take place in a different election cycle (e.g. California and Maryland sandwiching in three-year terms in 1879 and 1923 respectively).].
Most of these states jumped from two-year to four-year terms, but some were preceded by three-year terms (e.g. Delaware, Indiana, Maryland, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey).
No state has directly transitioned from one-year to four-year gubernatorial terms.
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Which States – if any – have ever chosen their governors *legislatively*?
(A handful of states still choose their attorneys general and other officers in that manner; all States had chosen US senators legislatively until the ratification of the 17th Amendment.)
This may not be a comprehensive list, but I recall Virginia did prior to the 1850s as did South Carolina prior to the 1860s.
1. I never knew so many states had tried a three-year term! Another state that had a three-year term for awhile was New York. In fact, NY went from two years to three (in 1876) and then back to two years (1894) before settling on four years.
2. Georgia used to confuse me, because it had gubernatorial elections in 1942, ’46, ’48, and ’50, but not ’44. Eventually I learned that the ’48 election (won by Herman Talmadge) was a special election for the unexpired portion of the 1943-1947 term, necessitated by the death of governor-elect Gene Talmadge after the 1946 election (which precipitated the famous “Three Governors Controversy”).
3. I absolutely LOVE this blog.